California Proposition 187

California Proposition 187, state ballot initiative that sought to deny access to social services, nonemergency health services, and public education to undocumented immigrants living in California. Voters approved the measure in 1994, but a U.S. federal court subsequently overturned it, and Proposition 187 was officially voided in 1999.

Conservative Republican state legislator Dick Mountjoy was one of the coauthors of the proposition, and he spearheaded the successful effort to obtain enough signatures to have the measure included on California’s November 1994 general election ballot. In addition to making undocumented immigrants in California ineligible for an array of public services, Proposition 187 would have required state and local agencies to report persons suspected of being undocumented to the state attorney general or to U.S. immigration authorities.

The text of Proposition 187 made various claims, including that Californians were “suffering economic hardship” because of the presence of illegal immigrants. The measure was backed by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who at the time was in the midst of a tough reelection campaign. A grassroots movement aimed at defeating Proposition 187 quickly sprang up, drawing strength in the state’s Latino communities. Many critics denounced the measure as a blatant effort to turn undocumented immigrants into scapegoats for problems the state faced. As election day approached, opponents of Proposition 187 staged a series of mass protests. On October 16 some 70,000 demonstrators marched through downtown Los Angeles, and on November 2 an estimated 10,000 Los Angeles Unified School District students took part in school walkouts. When the election was held on November 8, however, California voters passed Proposition 187 by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent. In addition, Wilson won reelection over his Democratic challenger, State Treasurer Kathleen Brown.

Shortly after Proposition 187 was approved, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a number of other organizations filed lawsuits in federal court. They argued that immigration was a federal, not state, matter and that Proposition 187 violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Plyler v. Doe (1982). In that landmark case, the Court, citing the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, ruled that states cannot exclude students from public schools on the basis of their immigration status. In late 1994 a U.S. district court judge issued an injunction that barred California from implementing Proposition 187, pending a legal review. Although the state appealed, much of the measure was declared unconstitutional in a final U.S. district court ruling in 1998. Federal mediation the following year formally voided Proposition 187, ending years of legal wrangling.

In later years Proposition 187 came to be seen as a turning point in California’s political history. In the decade after the initiative’s passage, the number of Latino registered voters in the state grew sharply. They largely joined the Democratic Party, contributing to a dramatic increase in the success rate of Democratic candidates in local and state elections. Many Latinos who had taken part in the grassroots campaign to defeat Proposition 187 were also inspired to seek public office. Among them were such leaders as Alex Padilla, who in 2021 became the first Latino to represent California in the U.S. Senate.